SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for April
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ECE Seminar: Towards Embodied Visual Intelligence
Tue, Apr 02, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dinesh Jayaraman, Postdoctoral Scholar/University of California, Berkeley
Talk Title: Towards Embodied Visual Intelligence
Abstract: What would it mean for a machine to see the world? Computer vision has recently made great progress on problems such as finding categories of objects and scenes, and poses of people in images. However, studying such tasks in isolated disembodied contexts, divorced from the physical source of their images, is insufficient to build intelligent visual agents. My research focuses on remarrying vision to action, by asking: how might vision benefit from the ability to act in the world, and vice versa? Could embodied visual agents teach themselves through interaction and experimentation? Are there actions they might perform to improve their visual perception? How might they construct visual plans to achieve long-term action goals? In my talk, I will set up the context for these questions, and cover some strands of my work addressing them, proposing approaches for self-supervised learning through proprioception, visual prediction for decomposing complex control tasks, and active perception. Finally, I will discuss my long-term vision and directions that I hope to work on in the next several years.
Biography: Dinesh Jayaraman is a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley. He received his PhD from UT Austin (2017) and B. Tech from IIT Madras (2011). His research interests are broadly in computer vision, robotics, and machine learning. In the last few years, he has worked on visual prediction, active perception, self-supervised visual learning, visuo-tactile robotic manipulation, semantic visual attributes, and zero-shot categorization. He has received an ACCV Best Application Paper Award (2016), a Samsung PhD Fellowship (2016), a UT Austin Graduate Dean's Fellowship (2016), and a Microelectronics and Computer Development Fellowship Award (2011). He has published in and reviewed for conferences and journals in computer vision, machine learning, and robotics, received a CVPR Outstanding Reviewer Award (2016), is as an Area Chair for NeurIPS (2018 & 2019).
Host: Professor Rahul Jain, rahul.jain@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Viterbi Keynote Lecture
Wed, Apr 03, 2019 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Leonard Kleinrock, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science/University of California, Los Angeles
Talk Title: On Some of My Simple Results
Series: Viterbi Lecture
Abstract: A number of interesting problems that I have addressed over the years which
yielded surprisingly simple results will be presented. Many of these had intuitively
pleasing interpretations or especially simple proofs and/or insights.
Biography: Professor Leonard Kleinrock is Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at UCLA.
He is considered a father of the Internet, having developed the mathematical theory of
packet networks, the technology underpinning the Internet as an MIT graduate student
in 1962. His UCLA Host computer became the first node of the Arpanet, predecessor
of the Internet, in 1969 and it was from his lab that he directed the transmission of the
first Internet message in October, 1969. Kleinrock received the 2007 National Medal
of Science, the highest honor for achievement in science bestowed by the President of
the United States.
Leonard Kleinrock received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1963. He has served as Professor of
Computer Science at UCLA since then, and was department Chairman from 1991-1995.
He received a BEE degree from CCNY in 1957 (Evening Session) and an MS degree from
MIT in 1959. He has received eight honorary degrees, has published over 250 papers,
authored six books, and has supervised the research for 50 Ph.D. students.
Professor Kleinrock is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, is an IEEE fellow, an ACM fellow, an INFORMS fellow,
an IEC fellow, an inaugural member of the Internet Hall of Fame, a Guggenheim fellow,
and an Eminent member of Eta Kappa Nu. Among his many honors, he is the recipient
of the National Medal of Science, the Ericsson Prize, the NAE Draper Prize, the Marconi
Prize, the Dan David Prize, the Okawa Prize, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award,
the ORSA Lanchester Prize, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the IEEE Leonard G. Abraham
Prize Paper Award, the IEEE Harry M. Goode Award and the IEEE Alexander Graham
Bell Medal.
Host: Richard Leahy, leahy@sipi.usc.edu
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/734846093
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/734846093
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Seminar: Rethinking the Hardware-Software Contract: Enabling Practical and General Cross-Layer Optimizations
Thu, Apr 04, 2019 @ 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nandita Vijaykumar, PhD Candidate/Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Rethinking the Hardware-Software Contract: Enabling Practical and General Cross-Layer Optimizations
Abstract: Layered abstractions in the computing stack are critical to building complex systems, but the existing *interfaces* between layers restrict what can be done at each level. Enhancing cross-layer interfaces--specifically, the hardware-software interface--is crucial towards addressing two important and hard-to-solve challenges in computer systems today: First, significant effort and expertise are required to write high-performance code that harnesses the full potential of today's diverse and sophisticated hardware. Second, as a hardware or system designer, architecting faster and more efficient systems is challenging as the vast majority of the program's semantic content and programmer intent gets lost in translation with today's hardware-software interface. Moving towards the future, these challenges in programmability and efficiency will be even more intractable as we architect increasingly heterogeneous and sophisticated systems.
In this talk, I will highlight my work [ISCA'15, MICRO'16, ISCA'18, ISCA'18] on how to design rich cross-layer abstractions that provide layered interfaces to directly communicate higher-level program semantics and intent from the application to the lower levels of the stack. In doing so, we can effectively bridge the so-called "semantic gap" between applications and computer systems, and enable a wide range of cross-layer optimizations in future systems with a single unifying interface. I will discuss how cross-layer approaches with these abstractions can significantly enhance (1) performance and efficiency by enabling the system to adapt to application characteristics and (2) programmability and portability by enabling application software to easily leverage diverse underlying hardware resources without specific knowledge of system details. For example, daunting aspects of programming GPUs can be made much simpler with a rich cross-layer programming abstraction. I will describe how such abstractions can be designed to be highly practical and low-overhead, requiring only small additions to existing abstractions.
Biography: Nandita Vijaykumar is a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Onur Mutlu and Prof. Phillip Gibbons. She is also currently a visiting student at ETH Zurich. Her research focuses on the interaction between programming models, system software, and hardware architecture in an increasingly diverse compute landscape, with a focus on memory systems and modern accelerators like GPUs. She is excited about enabling cross-layer full-stack solutions to make future systems highly efficient and easy-to-program. She is the recipient of the Benjamin Garver Lamme/Westinghouse Fellowship at CMU. During her Ph.D., she has been fortunate to intern at Microsoft Research, Nvidia Research, and Intel Labs.
Host: Professor Xuehai Qian, xuehai.qian@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Mahsa Shoaran Seminar - Friday, April 5th @ 2PM in EEB 248
Fri, Apr 05, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mahsa Shoaran, Cornell University
Talk Title: Ultra-Low-Power Neural Interfaces: from Monitoring to Diagnosis and Therapy
Abstract: Implantable and wearable medical devices are increasingly being developed as alternative therapies for intractable diseases. In particular, undertreated neurological disorders such as epilepsy, migraine, and Alzheimer's disease are of major public health concern around the world, driving the need to explore such new approaches. Despite significant advances in neural interface systems, the small number of recording channels in existing technology remains a barrier to their therapeutic potential. This is mainly due to the fact that simultaneous recording from a large number of electrodes imposes stringent energy and area constraints on the integrated circuits that interface with these electrodes. In this talk, I will first discuss an efficient compressive sensing framework for multichannel cortical implants. Next, I will present the design of our sub-microwatt per channel closed-loop seizure control device and both its in-vivo and offline performance. I will then discuss our latest work on the integration of machine learning algorithms for on-chip classification of neural data. Finally, I will give examples of how these results may be used towards designing new devices, to enhance the lives of millions of people suffering from disabling neurological conditions in future.
Biography: Mahsa Shoaran is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. Prior to joining Cornell, she was a postdoctoral fellow in Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. She received her PhD from EPFL in 2015 and her B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Sharif University of Technology. Her research interests broadly include circuit, system, and algorithm design for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Mahsa is a recipient of the 2019 Google Faculty Research Award, the Early and Advanced Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships, and the NSF Award for Young Professionals Contributing to Smart and Connected Health. She was named a Rising Star in EECS by MIT in 2015.
Host: ECE-Electrophysics
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Seminar: A Real-Time Algorithmic Framework for Robust and Risk-Sensitive Planning and Decision-Making
Mon, Apr 08, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sumeet Singh, PhD Candidate, Dept of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Stanford University
Talk Title: A Real-Time Algorithmic Framework for Robust and Risk-Sensitive Planning and Decision-Making
Abstract: Integrating autonomous robots into safety-critical settings requires reasoning about uncertainty at all levels of the autonomy stack. In this talk, I will present novel algorithmic tools leveraging Lyapunov-based analysis, convex optimization, and risk measures to address robustness in robotic motion planning and decision-making under uncertainty. In the first part of the talk, by harnessing the theories of incremental stability and contraction, I will describe a unified framework for synthesizing robust trajectory tracking controllers for complex underactuated nonlinear systems with analytical bounded-input-bounded-output disturbance rejection guarantees. These results will be combined with computational tools drawn from semi-infinite convex programming to design real-time motion planning algorithms with certifiable safety guarantees. In addition, I will illustrate how to leverage these tools for sample-efficient model-based reinforcement learning with control-theoretic guarantees. In the second part of the talk, I will describe a framework for lifting notions of robustness from low-level motion planning to higher-level sequential decision-making using the theory of risk measures. Specifically, by leveraging a specific class of risk measures with favorable axiomatic foundations, I will demonstrate how to design decision-making algorithms with tuneable robustness properties. I will then discuss a novel application of this framework to inverse reinforcement learning for humans in safety-critical scenarios. The domains of aerial robotics and autonomous cars will be used throughout the talk as running examples.
Biography: Sumeet Singh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Autonomous Systems Lab in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at Stanford University. He received a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering and a Diploma of Music (Performance) from University of Melbourne in 2012, and a M.Sc. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 2015. Prior to joining Stanford, Sumeet worked in the Berkeley Micromechanical Analysis and Design lab at the University of California, Berkeley in 2011 and the Aeromechanics Branch at NASA Ames in 2013. Sumeet's research interests include (1) Robust motion planning for constrained nonlinear systems, (2) Risk-sensitive inference and decision-making with humans in-the-loop, and (3) Design of verifiable learning architectures for safety-critical applications. Sumeet is the recipient of the Stanford Graduate Fellowship (2013-2016), the most prestigious Stanford fellowship awarded to incoming graduate students, and the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (2018).
Host: Professor Massoud Pedram, pedram@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Fall 2018 Joint CSC@USC/CommNetS-MHI Seminar Series
Mon, Apr 08, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jason Marden, University of California, Santa Barbara
Talk Title: If agents could talk, what should they say?
Abstract: The goal in networked control of multiagent systems is to derive desirable collective behavior through the design of local control algorithms. The information available to the individual agents, either through sensing or communication, invariably defines the space of admissible control laws. Hence, informational restrictions impose constraints on the achievable performance guarantees. The first part of this talk will provide one such constraint with regards to the efficiency of the resulting stable solutions for a class of distributed submodular optimization problems. Further, we will also discuss how strategic information exchange can help mitigate these degradations. The second part of this talk will focus on how agents should utilize available information to optimize the efficiency of the emergent collective behavior. In particular, we will discuss a methodology for optimizing the efficiency guarantees (i.e., price of anarchy) in distributed resource allocation problems through the design of local agent objective functions. Lastly, we will highlight some unintended consequences associated with these optimal designed agent objective functions -“ optimizing the performance of the worst-case equilibria (i.e., price of anarchy) often comes at the expense of the best-case equilibria (i.e., price of stability).
Biography: Jason R. Marden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer, Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jason received a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 2001 from UCLA, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2007, also from UCLA, under the supervision of Jeff S. Shamma, where he was awarded the Outstanding Graduating PhD Student in Mechanical Engineering. After graduating from UCLA, he served as a junior fellow in the Social and Information Sciences Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology until 2010 when he joined the University of Colorado. In 2015, Jason joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jason is a recipient of the ONR Young Investigator Award (2015), NSF Career Award (2014), the AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2012), the American Automatic Control Council Donald P. Eckman Award (2012), and the SIAM/SGT Best Sicon Paper Award (2015). Furthermore, Jason is also an advisor for the students selected as finalists for the best student paper award at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (2011, 2016, 2017). Jason's research interests focus on game theoretic methods for the control of distributed multiagent systems.
Host: Ketan Savla, ksavla@usc.edu
More Info: http://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2019Spring/marden.html
More Information: 190408 Jason Marden CSCUSC Seminar.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Brienne Moore
Event Link: http://csc.usc.edu/seminars/2019Spring/marden.html
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Joint Seminar Series on Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and METRANS
Wed, Apr 10, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Qi Alfred Chen, Computer Science at University California, Irvine
Talk Title: Ghost Cars and Fake Obstacles: Automated Security Analysis of Emerging Smart Transportation Systems
Series: Joint Seminar Series on Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and METRANS
Abstract: Transportation systems today will soon be transformed profoundly due to two recent technology advances: Connected Vehicle (CV) and Autonomous Vehicle (AV). Such transformation leads to the creation of a series of next-generation transportation systems which can substantially improve the quality of our everyday life. However, this also brings new features and operation modes into the transportation ecosystem, e.g., network connectivity and machine learning based sensing, which may introduce new security problem and challenges. In this talk, I will describe my current research that initiates the first effort towards systematically understanding the robustness of the software-based control in CV and AV systems.
Biography: Qi Alfred Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UCI. His research interest is network and systems security, and addressing security challenges through systematic problem analysis and mitigation. His work has high impact in both academic and industry with over 10 top-tier conference papers, a DHS US-CERT alert, multiple CVEs, and over 50 news articles by major news media such as Fortune and BBC News.
Host: Ketan Savla
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Seminar: Verification and Synthesis Algorithms for Safe Autonomy
Fri, Apr 12, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chuchu Fan, PhD Candidate, UIUC
Talk Title: Verification and Synthesis Algorithms for Safe Autonomy
Abstract: A single design defect can wreak havoc across thousands of deployed instances of autonomous systems or cyber-physical systems (CPS) such as self-driving cars, drones, and medical devices. Can rigorous approaches based on formal methods and control theory improve safety in autonomous systems by transforming the conventional trial-and-error paradigm? Verification and synthesis for typical models of real-world autonomous systems and CPS are well-known to be hard due to their high dimensionality, nonlinearities, and their nondeterministic and hybrid nature. In this talk, I will present new verification and synthesis algorithms which suggest that these challenges can be overcome and that rigorous approaches are indeed promising. The common ingredient underlying my algorithms is automated sensitivity analysis, which leads to semi-decision procedures for verification and synthesis, with soundness, completeness, and optimality guarantees. I will introduce the first bounded safety verification algorithm for nonlinear hybrid systems. This data-driven algorithm, which is the basis for the C2E2 tool, can also be used for compositional verification of networked and distributed autonomous systems. Then I will present my work on the DryVR framework, which is the first approach that can verify real-world CPS with incomplete or imprecise mathematical models. The final part of my talk will rely on symbolic sensitivity analysis with applications in control synthesis for large linear systems with disturbances. I will discuss successful applications in autonomous driving scenarios, powertrain control, circuits, and medical devices as examples to show the power of these tools for solving challenging problems in a wide range of engineering domains.
Biography: Chuchu Fan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University, Department of Automation in 2013. Her research interests are in the areas of formal methods and control for safe autonomy. She is a recipient of multiple prestigious awards including Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship (2018), Young Researcher for Heidelberg Laureate Forum (2017), Rising Stars in EECS (2016), EMSOFT'16 Best Paper finalist, and Robert Bosch Best Verification Award in CPSWeek'15. Her research achievements are also recognized with a Mac Van Valkenburg Research Award (2018), a Yi-Min Wang and Pi-Yu Chung Endowed Research Award (2017), and a Rambus Fellowship (2016).
Host: Professor Paul Bogdan, pbogdan@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Ming Hsieh Institute Research and Technology Series
Mon, Apr 15, 2019 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mary Czerwinski, Principal Researcher and Research Manager of the Visualization andInteraction (VIBE) Research Group at Microsoft
Talk Title: Using Technology for Health and Wellbeing
Series: MHI Research & Technology Seminar
Abstract: How can we create technologies to help us reflect on and change our behavior, improve our health and overall wellbeing both at work and at home? In this talk, I will briefly describe the last several years of work our research team has been doing in this area. We have developed wearable technology to help families manage tense situations with their children, mobile phone-based applications for handling stress and depression, as well as logging tools that can help you stay focused or recommend good times to take a break at work. The overarching goal in all of this research is to develop tools that adapt to the user so that they can maximize their productivity and improve their health and happiness.
Biography: Dr. Mary Czerwinski is a Principal Researcher andResearch Manager of the Visualization and Interaction(VIBE) Research Group. Mary's latest research focuses primarily on emotion tracking and intervention design and delivery, information worker task management and health and wellness for individuals and groups. Her research background is in visual attention and multitasking. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Indiana University in Bloomington. Mary was awarded the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award, was inducted into the CHI Academy, and became an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2010. She also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Indiana University's Brain and Psychological Sciences department in 2014. Mary became a Fellow of the ACM in 2016. More information about Dr. Czerwinskican be found at her website:https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/marycz/
Host: Ming Hsieh Institute
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Benjamin Paul
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series
Wed, Apr 17, 2019 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chi Wang, Founder and CEO of TerraQuanta
Talk Title: Algorithm Development on Planetary Scale Dataset
Series: Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things
Abstract: Developing algorithms on satellite data and extracting information useful for industrial applications sounds straightforward, but when the dataset becomes multiple petabytes, life becomes hard in every aspect. In this talk, we will share our experiences in 1) How we deal with large remote sensing datasets with limited infrastructure, 2) How machine learning approach combines with HPC helps with algorithm development, 3) Our application cases, e.g. predicting total planted areas of soybeans to predict soybean futures price. The talk will be tailored for general audience with engineering backgrounds, and will not go deep into technical/mathematical details.
Biography: Chi Wang obtained his B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2011, and later obtained his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of Southern California in 2016. After graduation, he founded TerraQuanta in China, a startup company developing AI platform to analyze multi-PB remote sensing data. TerraQuanta provides data engine of our physical earth with a particular focus on global agriculture. Dr. Wang has successfully raised several million USD from prestigious investors in China, also he is listed "30 under "30 by Forbes China and "30 under "30 by Hurun Report.
Host: Edmond A Jonckheere
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - RTH 109
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series
Wed, Apr 17, 2019 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor Suman Chakravorty , Aerospace Engineering, Texas A&M University
Talk Title: A Decoupling Principle in Stochastic Optimal Control and Its Implications
Series: Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things
Abstract: The problem of Stochastic Optimal Control is ubiquitous in Robotics and Control since it is the fundamental formulation for decision-making under uncertainty. The answer to the problem can be computed by solving an associated Dynamic Programming (DP) problem. Unfortunately, the DP paradigm is also synonymous with the infamous "Curse of Dimensionality (COD)", a phrase coined by the discoverer of the Dynamic Programming paradigm, Richard Bellman, nearly 60 years ago, to capture the fact that the computational complexity of solving a DP problem grows exponentially in the dimension of the state space of the problem.
In this talk, we will introduce a newly discovered paradigm in stochastic optimal control, called Decoupling, that allows us to separate the design of the open and closed loops of a stochastic optimal control problem with continuous control space. This "Decoupled" solution allows us to break the COD inherent in DP problems, while remaining near-optimal, to third order, to the true stochastic control. The implications of the Decoupled design are examined in the context of Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Reinforcement Learning (RL). We shall introduce two algorithms, called the Trajectory Optimized Perturbation Feedback Control (T-PFC), and the Decoupled Data based Control(D2C), for the MPC and RL problems respectively. We shall also examine the consequences of the decoupling principle in partially observed/ belief space planning problems and present the Trajectory optimized Linear Quadratic Gaussian (T-LQG) algorithm.
Biography: Suman Chakravorty obtained his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering in 1997 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2004. From August 2004- August 2010, he was an Assistant Professor with the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M University, College Station and since August 2010, he has been an Associate Professor in the department. Dr. Chakravorty's broad research interests lie in the estimation and control of stochastic dynamical systems with application to autonomous, distributed robotic mapping and planning, and situational awareness problems. He is a member of AIAA, ASME and IEEE. He is an Associate Editor for the ASME Journal on Dynamical Systems, Measurement and Control and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
Host: Mihailo Jovanovic
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series
Thu, Apr 18, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Marco Pavone, Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University
Talk Title: Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand Systems for Future Urban Mobility
Series: Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things
Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the operational and societal aspects of autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) systems, a rapidly developing mode of transportation wherein mobility is provided on demand by robotic, self-driving vehicles. Specifically, I will discuss AMoD systems along three dimensions: (1) modeling, namely mathematical frameworks capable of capturing the salient dynamic and stochastic features of customer demand, (2) control, that is coordination algorithms for the vehicles aimed at throughput maximization, and (3) societal, entailing system-level studies characterizing the interaction between AMoD and other infrastructures, such as the electric power and public transit networks. I will conclude the talk by presenting a number of directions for future research.
Biography: Dr. Marco Pavone is an Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, where he is the Director of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory and Co-Director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford. Before joining Stanford, he was a Research Technologist within the Robotics Section at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He received a Ph.D. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. His main research interests are in the development of methodologies for the analysis, design, and control of autonomous systems, with an emphasis on self-driving cars, autonomous aerospace vehicles, and future mobility systems. He is a recipient of a number of awards, including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barack Obama, an ONR YIP Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and a NASA Early Career Faculty Award. He was identified by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) as one of America's 20 most highly promising investigators under the age of 40. His work has been recognized with best paper nominations or awards at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, at the Field and Service Robotics Conference, at the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, at the ROBOCOMM Conference, and at NASA symposia. He is currently serving as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Control Systems Magazine.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 109
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series on Integrated Systems
Fri, Apr 19, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Emmanouil M Tentzeris, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology
Talk Title: 3D/4D Printed Flexible Autonomous Wireless Modules for IoT and Smart City Applications
Host: Profs. Hossein Hashemi, Mike Chen, Dina El-Damak, and Mahta Moghaddam
More Information: MHI Seminar Series IS - Emmanouil Tentzeris.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jenny Lin
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
ECE Seminar: Analyzing Learning Algorithms: Perspectives from Information Theory and Optimal Transport
Mon, Apr 22, 2019 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Varun Jog, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Talk Title: Analyzing Learning Algorithms: Perspectives from Information Theory and Optimal Transport
Abstract: In this talk, we will analyze generalization and robustness properties of learning algorithms using tools derived from information theory and optimal transport. In statistical learning theory, generalization error is used to quantify the degree to which a supervised machine learning algorithm may overfit to training data. Leveraging recent work [Xu and Raginsky (2017)], we derive information-theoretic generalization error bounds for a broad class of iterative algorithms that are characterized by bounded, noisy updates with Markovian structure, such as stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD). We describe certain shortcomings of these information-theoretic bounds, and propose alternate strategies that rely on optimal transport theory. We show that results from optimal transport are well-suited to analyze not only generalization properties, but also robustness properties of learning algorithms.
Biography: Varun Jog received his B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2010, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from UC Berkeley in 2015. Since 2016, he is an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a fellow at the Grainger Institute for Engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. His research interests include information theory, machine learning, and network science. He is a recipient of the Eli Jury award from the EECS Department at UC Berkeley (2015) and the Jack Keil Wolf student paper award at ISIT 2015.
Host: Professor Salman Avestimehr, avestime@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Munushian Keynote Lecture - F. Duncan Haldane - Nobel Laureate, Physics 2016, Princeton University
Mon, Apr 22, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: F. Duncan Haldane, Princeton University
Talk Title: Topological Quantum Matter, Entanglement, and the Second Quantum Revolution
Abstract: While the laws of quantum mechanics have remained unchanged and always validated for the last eighty-five years, new discoveries about the exotic states that they allow, entanglement, and ideas from quantum information theory have greatly changed our perspective, so much so that some talk of a "second quantum revolution" that is currently underway. The discovery of unexpected "topological states of matter", and their possible use for "topologically-protected quantum information processing" is one of the important themes of these developments, and will be reviewed. Some of the early work in the 1980's that began to expose topological quantum matter has already earned Nobel Prizes, including the experimental discoveries of von Klitzing (Integer Quantum Hall Effect, Nobel 1985), and Stormer and Tsui (Fractional Quantum Hall Effect, Nobel 1998), the theoretical discovery of its description by Laughlin (co-laureate, 1998), and the work honored by the recent 2016 prize, which also occured in the 1980's. Given the surprising nature of subsequent recent developments, and the excitement they have generated, it seems likely that more will follow, especially if the current attempts to demonstrate "braiding" become successful. It is no exaggeration to say that, at least in Condensed Matter Physics, the concepts and language used to describe quantum states of matter have dramatically changed since about 1980 as a result of all these developments, in which the quantum property of "entanglement" plays a key role.
Biography: Duncan Haldane, who shared the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics with David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz, is the Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics at Princeton University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and a Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Physics (UK).
He was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize for his theoretical work on "topological states of matter", including pioneering
work on unexpected (and initially controversial) "topological quantum states" of one-dimensional systems of magnetic atoms (for which he had previously received the 1993 Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society), and on the 1988 theoretical prediction of (ferromagnetic) topological insulators exhibiting the "quantum anomalous Hall effect" (finally observed experimentally many years later in 2013) for which he shared the 2012 Dirac medal of the International
Center for Theoretical Physics (Trieste) with Charles Kane and Shou-Cheng Zhang. His work helped to open up new directions and ways of thinking about quantum effects in condensed matter, and in recent years, "topological quantum matter" has grown into a very active experimental field which many believe may provide platforms for "quantum computing". He also initiated the field of "topological photonics". He currently works on "quantum geometry" in the "fractional quantum Hall effect".
Dr. Haldane received his Ph. D. in theoretical condensed matter physics from Cambridge University, under the direction
and mentorship of Philip W. Anderson (Nobel Laureate in Physics 1977), and, before his appointment at Princeton University, worked at the Institut Laue-Langevin (Grenoble, France), the University of Southern California, Bell Laboratories, and the University of California, San Diego. Haldane was born in London in 1951, of mixed Scottish and Slovenian origins. Despite also having three forenames, he is unrelated to the famous biologist J. B. S. Haldane.
Host: ECE-Electrophysics
More Info: https://minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian/
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Marilyn Poplawski
Event Link: https://minghsiehee.usc.edu/about/lectures/munushian/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
IoT Solutions with Amazon Web Services
Tue, Apr 23, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Chris Azer, Amazon Web Services
Talk Title: IoT Solutions with Amazon Web Services
Abstract: There are billions of devices in homes, factories, oil wells, hospitals, cars, and thousands of other places. With the proliferation of devices, you increasingly need solutions to connect them, and collect, store, and analyze device data. AWS IoT provides broad and deep functionality, spanning the edge to the cloud, so you can build IoT solutions for virtually any use case across a wide range of devices. This session will explore customer use cases and dive deep into some of these core IoT services in the cloud and at the edge.
Biography: As an IoT Specialist Solutions Architect for AWS Public Sector, Chris Azer is responsible for supporting federal and state government agencies and partners with their IoT initiatives. With over 15 years of experience, it has been his main goal to help customers extract value from connected devices within the public sector community and industrial automation. Today, Chris helps his customers improve quality of life for populations, business operations, quality of care from service providers, environmental sustainability, and host of other use case scenarios.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari, CCI
More Information: 190423_AWS_Chris Azer Flyer.pdf
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Brienne Moore
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things and Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series
Wed, Apr 24, 2019 @ 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Nalini Venkatasubramanian, Department of Computer Science, University of California Irvine
Talk Title: Resilient Communities, The Elements - A Middleware Perspective
Series: Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things
Abstract: Advances in technology mobile computing, cyberphysical systems, Internet-of-Things, cloud computing and big data technologies are making available new modalities of information and new channels of communication. It has enabled the interconnection of objects and data to provide novel services that are changing the landscape of cities and communities worldwide. The impact of these technologies are being felt when they improve and enrich the basic elements of our daily lives in our homes and workplaces. During large scale disasters and unexpected events such as (fires, floods and earthquakes), these technologies can be morphed to gain improved situational awareness and better decision support for response personnel, agencies and citizens. The ability to ensure resilient operation under small events and large disasters requires intelligent data collection and data exchange from diverse devices and data sources and interpretation of this information for higher level semantic observations. Drawing on our recent efforts in smartspaces, smart firefighting and smartwater infrastructures , I will discuss the role of adaptive middleware and big data technologies to generate situational awareness. The ability to combine novel technologies at multiple layers will open up new possibilities for resilient and scalable communities of the future.
Biography: Nalini Venkatasubramanian is currently a Professor in the School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California Irvine. She has had significant research and industry experience in the areas of distributed systems, adaptive middleware, pervasive and mobile computing, cyberphysical systems, distributed multimedia and formal methods and has over 250 publications in these areas. As a key member of the Center for Emergency Response Technologies at UC Irvine, Nalini's recent research has focused on enabling resilient and sustainable communities using IoT/CPS technologies. In particular, her research addresses scalable observation and analysis of situational information from multimodal input sources; dynamic adaptation of the underlying systems to enable information flow under massive failures and the dissemination of rich notifications to members of the public at large. She is the recipient of the prestigious NSF Career Award, multiple Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Awards and best paper awards. Prof. Venkatasubramanian has served in numerous program and organizing committees of conferences on middleware, distributed systems and multimedia and on the editorial boards of journals. She received and M.S and Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Her research is supported both by government and industrial sources such as NSF, DHS, ONR, DARPA, Novell, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia. Prior to arriving at UC Irvine, Nalini was a Research Staff Member at the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California.
Host: Paul Bogdan
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia White
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Ming Hsieh Institute Seminar Series on Integrated Systems
Fri, Apr 26, 2019 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Hybrid and Resonant Switched-Capacitor Power Converters -“ Achieving High Power Density in Applications Ranging from Electric Aircrafts to Data Centers
Host: Profs. Hossein Hashemi, Mike Chen, Dina El-Damak, and Mahta Moghaddam
More Information: MHI Seminar Series IS - Robert Pilawa-Podgurski.pdf
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Jenny Lin
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
